Just Say No to Government Sexual Intrusion

If taxpayers have any doubt that government is becoming ever more intrusive, they might check out how California is attempting to redefine consensual sex. This legislative attempt is based on the notion that there is some part of the word “No!” that college students, allegedly the best and brightest, fail to understand. Driving the attempt is a recent study, from the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, which contends that one in five women is sexually assaulted while in college, usually by somebody she knows, and most often she does not report what happened.

If the White Houses Task Force’s one-in-five number is a stretch, it would not be the first time. For 16 years, a woman named Jennifer Beeman ran the UC Davis Campus Violence Prevention Program, and in a 2001 federal grant application she claimed that as many as 700 UC Davis students were victims of rape or attempted rape every year. University officials eventually conceded that Beeman “significantly over-reported” the figures, but her fakery drew down four federal grants totaling more than $3 million. In 2011 Beeman got 180 days in state prison and five years’ probation for embezzlement and falsification of records pertaining to campus violence.

Even if the White House Task Force’s numbers are right, the plan still has problems, according to an editorial in the Los Angeles Times. Consent is appropriate, “but is there a role for the government in mandating affirmative consent?” The Times finds the policy vague, “unnecessarily intrusive,” and questions whether such intrusion is “either reasonable or enforceable.”

The proposed legislation applies to colleges that receive public funds, confirming that government funds invite more government control. The involvement of the White House Task Force confirms that, even in the college dorm room, Big Brother is watching you. And taxpayers foot the bill, even though the Constitution gives the federal government no role in education.

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